Washington — NIOSH is facing an 80% reduction to its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, according to a Department of Health and Human Services document published June 9.
The Administration for a Healthy America’s budget justification appeared 10 days after HHS published its budget in brief on May 30.
HHS is seeking to allocate $73.2 million to NIOSH in FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The agency’s FY 2025 budget was $362.8 million.
Of the proposed total, $66.5 million would go to mining research, with the remainder slated for the Firefighter Cancer Registry ($5.5 million) and the National Mesothelioma Registry and Tissue Bank ($1.2 million). These three divisions received the same funding in FY 2025.
NIOSH’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, which is tasked with approving respirators, is one of the divisions that would receive no funding. The others: the National Occupational Research Agenda, “education and research centers,” and “other occupational safety and health research.”
HHS says the proposed eliminations are intended to “align investments with the administration’s priorities, streamline the bureaucracy, reset the proper balance between federal and state responsibilities, and save taxpayer funds.”
Congress will have the final say, and the House Appropriations Committee in July could release a draft version of the appropriations bill for the departments of Labor, HHS, Education and related agencies. A subcommittee markup is scheduled for July 21, followed by a full committee markup on July 24, according to a schedule released June 6 by Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who chairs the committee.
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Original article published by Safety+Health an NSC publication